Page 241 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Australia

QUEENSLAND  239

SOUTH OF TOWNSVILLE

Southern Queensland is renowned for two distinct features:
its fine coastal surfing beaches and, inland, some of the
richest farming land in Australia. The area is the centre of
the country’s beef and sugar industries, and the Burdekin
River Delta supports a fertile “salad basin” yielding tomatoes,
beans and other small crops. Ports such as Mackay and
Gladstone service some rich inland mines.

Recognizing the land’s potential, pastoralists In tandem with this agricultural boom,
followed hard on the heels of the explorers southern Queensland thrived in the latter
who opened up this region in the 1840s. half of the 19th century when gold was
Sugar production had begun by 1869 in the found in the region. Towns such as
Bundaberg area and by the 1880s it was a Charters Towers have preserved much
flourishing industry, leading to a shameful of their 19th­century architecture as
period in the country’s history. As Europeans reminders of the glory days of the gold
were considered inherently unsuited to rush. Although much of the gold has
work in the tropics, growers seized on South been extracted, the region is still rich in
Sea Islanders for cheap labour. Called coal and has the world’s largest sapphire
Kanakas, the labourers were paid a pittance, fields. Amid this mineral landscape, there
housed in substandard accommodation are also some beautiful national parks.
and given the most physically demanding Today, the area is perhaps best known
jobs. Some Kanakas were kidnapped from for its coastal features. Surfers from all over
their homeland (a practice called “black­ the world flock to the aptly named resort
birding”), but this was outlawed in 1868 and of Surfers Paradise, and the white sand
government inspectors were placed on all beaches of the Gold Coast are crowded
Kanakas ships to check that their emigration throughout the summer months. The
was voluntary. It was not until Federation in region is also the gateway to the southern
1901 that the use of island labour stopped tip of the Great Barrier Reef and the
but by then some 60,000 Kanakas had been Whitsunday Islands, and is popular
brought to Queensland. with both locals and visitors.

Surfers trying to catch the best wave in Surfers Paradise
Lake Wabby, the deepest lake on the largest sand island in the world